April 13th, 2015

Here are some pics of the country side where Edit lives. 

It made me feel right at home! I didn’t realize how much I missed the country!

It is always so incredibly humbling to see what these people live in. 

The trees behind me are mistletoe trees! Cool eh?! 

I feel like I’m in a Dr. Seuss book! :)

Hey family! Ok I have to tell you all about Edit!!!

Wow, I have never met anyone so “golden!” I don’t want to say I stopped believing in golden investigators, but I started just thinking that that meant people who were prepared to hear our message and would meet several times with us. Welllll I was so wrong. Edit went into the church in Budapest and said she felt so weird, because everyone around her was smiling and in a really good mood. She  started talking to the Elders there. She said that she had the warmest feeling come over her and soon she was smiling and was so incredibly happy. She said she had no idea why, but she knew that this "was something” and she had to find out more. She has met with a lot of missionaries of other faiths, but always stopped after the first meeting. She wasn’t “a believer” before she met with us, but she bore the strongest testimony to me in our first lesson that she knows without a single doubt that God is real and guiding her in her life. That she knows Joseph Smith restored Jesus Christ’s gospel on the earth. Her testimony is so incredibly strong of the Book of Mormon and of prayer. She said “of course!” she’s going to be baptized and has been sharing the Gospel with everyone that she knows. She lives in a little falu, so it takes a while to get to her place, but sooo worth it!

This week, she came to church and just loved it! She has some health problems though, her legs are always in a lot of pain and it is hard for her to stand and walk, but she still made it the 3 hours it took her to come to church, isn’t that amazing?! When we met she said she didn’t know if she could come because of the pain and she has no money to come. We knew that Heavenly Father would help her. She jumped right in and said, you know, you’re right! He will, I’ll be at church this week! Wow, she just doesn’t stop amazing me!! After church, she got a priesthood blessing. When we said amen, I looked over and tears were just streaming down her face. She couldn’t say much, but said “thank you” over and over and “this feeling, this feeling!” We explained to her that it was the Spirit that she was feeling and that is how Heavenly Father speaks to us and tells us when things are right and inline with his will and how that feeling can be with her constantly after she is baptized and receives the gift of the Holy Ghost. She would be baptized this weekend, but she is going into the hospital for three weeks. So hard she has this trial right now! We’re just going to pray and trust in Heavenly Father that He will watch over her and we will still be able to meet with her.

We had a really great missionary leadership meeting this week in Budapest too! I learned a ton! We will be going on splits almost weekly, starting next week! This week, we have zone training, ah! I’m so nervous, I hate speaking in front of people! So we will be going to Győr on Friday (so excited to go back!!) and we have also been invited to do a training in Dunaújváros on Thursady! It will be really fun going back to some of my old cities!

Love you all so much!!!

Schnoor Nover

April 7th, 2015

Ok, so leaving Győr was so hard, everyone was crying! It was like saying goodbye to the family all over again! I was excited for my new area too though and I knew that Heavenly Father had more work for me to do.

So awkward story that I forgot to tell you last week!!

K, so Emma, I love her! She feels like my Hungarian Mom out here! She is one of the happiest Hungarians I have met out here! Always smiling and laughing! She said that her husband hates the Mormons, so we meet at the church. Well, she hurt her ankle in the middle of cleaning, so we thought it would be an awesome service opportunity to go clean her windows.

Wait, back up, so first day in Győr with Sis Whittaker, I stopped someone on the street and as soon as he saw that I was a Mormon missionary, he cussed me out, pretty hard too. We apologized if we had said something that offended him and wished him a good day and went on to the next person. Well we seem to run into him everywhere!!! haha He always walks by and says “Mormonok!!” like it’s a big insult... haha calling me a Mormon doesn’t ever bother me at all though! :) or he yells it across the street when he sees us talking to anyone. We always are smiling and nice to him, but he’s made it pretty obvious that we’re, well, not exactly friends...haha ok, so anyways, we finished cleaning and shared our message. I walked into the kitchen and saw one of those cartoon pictures of a man. You know, the ones you pay someone to draw you? Well I pointed it out to Sister Rankin and said “wow, doesn’t that look just like the guy that hates us?” haha .... wait. My heart dropped and I went running all over the house like a crazy person trying to find a picture of her husband. FINALLY I found a tiny little picture. Sis. Rankin grabbed my hand and at the same time we whispered “it’s him!” It WAS the man from the street that cusses us out and always yells at us. We were IN his house!! Ah!! Our adrenaline was pumping pretty hard! Sweet Emma had no idea, but we told her that we had to leave and asked if we could end with prayer, (we wanted to get our of there before our “friend” came home asap). Her eyes got huge and she said “No! you can’t!' she pointed behind me at the window and said “he's coming!! It’s my husband!' AAH! We all panicked including her and we’re scrambling over each other like crazy people trying to get our boots on! haha Sister Rankin kept saying over and over “crawl out the window!! crawl out the window!” haha Her eyes were HUGE and looking all over for some escape. I was kneeling down just zipping up my last boot when the door swung open right in front of me and we all froze. He started saying hello when I looked up at him and we made eye contact. He stopped talking mid sentence when he recognized me. We both knew exactly who each other were. I quickly jumped up, said hello to him, thanked Emma for having us, shook his hand, gave him a smile and we left! We made it out alive! :) So really, nothing happened, but it was one of the biggest coincidences! haha Well, he did tell me to get off of the streets, so I did. I don’t think he was implying off the streets and into his own home though! haha So that was our crazy last experience in Győr.

GOSH!! I am the worst, didn’t even tell you about Easter or conference yet. Honestly, we watched it all in Hungarian, so we’re downloading it today and will watch it later! I am so excited to hear it again in English!! I understood most of it and it was incredible what I did hear, but of course, there is so much more that I will learn when I hear it in my own language. I think the biggest difference is I was focusing so much on the language to understand that I wasn’t able to focus as much on my feelings. I was so grateful for my investigators that I knew were watching it. That we’re really listening to and seeing a living prophet of God and his disciples!

EASTER!! So there is a different tradition over here. They used to dump buckets of water on all of the girls, (we’re the flowers and they water us to stay pretty and fresh) but now, they spray us with perfume!! haha Early in the morning, the elders showed up and told us they had a surprise for us! They recited the verse and sprayed us, then a member whipped out a huge water sprayer and totally drenched us!! haha oh my goodness! Turns out if the boys spray you and you don’t have an egg, you have to give them a kiss.... well no one told us that tradition!! haha So we were streeting and all of these guys kept asking if they could spray us and we told them we don’t have an egg, sorry.... well then they would just lean on in or just stand there waiting for a kiss!! hahaha awkward! We tried to just give them a Book of Mormon instead but for some reason, they weren’t as interested in that! haha

It was a really humbling Easter though. We were out on the street for 8 hours yesterday trying to talk to people about the real meaning of Easter, our Savior Jesus Christ. Sadly, almost everyone said no, or they are too busy preparing the food or decorating etc. to listen to our message. Most people said “I don’t have time to focus on Christ, I have too much to do”. Wow, it was a very different Easter than normal, no eggs, chocolate or bunnies. But I learned that that is so not important, it really doesn’t mean anything. There were 3 people who listened. So the 8 hours were worth it and we were able to mention Christ’s name to everyone we started to talk to. I am so incredibly grateful to be here representing Him with His name on my badge every single day, not just at Easter and Christmas time but every single day! Christ truly is the center of our religion and only though Him and the power of His atonement can we return to our Father in heaven. I know that He lives. I know that we have a purpose here on earth. I know that death is not the end and that we all will live again.

Oh and yes, Sister Training Leader is just like a zone leader, but we’re over all of the sisters. I am really excited, but really nervous at the same time! Ah! What on earth are they going to learn from me?!

I love you all so much!!! Have a great week!

xoxoxoxoxoxo

Sister Schnoor